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We are joined by Abiola Bello and Helen Lewis from the Diverse Book Awards. They discuss how they started the awards in the middle of the pandemic, the challenges of running them and even a sneak peak of what to expect from Wigtown YA 2021.

Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of 'Open Water', answers 31 pressing questions for Same Page. If you're not signed up for Same Page, here's the link: https://bit.ly/samepageya

We go behind the scenes with publishers 404 Ink and their forthcoming new non-fiction series, Inklings. This conversation features founders Heather McDaid & Laura Jones, and author Katie Goh whose The End: Surviving the World Through Fictional Disasters will be one of the Inklings titles.

Sometimes a book comes along that marries meaning, moment and enthusiasm with such force and beauty that it stops you in your tracks. Steven Lovatt’s Birdsong in a Time of Silence is such a book. Started as the world ground to a halt - its first page opens on 24th March 2020 - it charts the extraordinary days of the past year spent noticing the chorus around us, despite it all. A keen birder, Steven delves into the magic of birdsong and the places it can take us when we have too much time to dwell in the weeds and margins of our minds.

As an audio finale for Big Bang we present an interview with Robert Shearman, a man of many talents whose stellar writing career spans theatre, television, audio drama, novels and short fiction. We discuss Rob's forthcoming novel, a Doctor Who Target novelisation of 'Dalek', an episode, also written by Rob, that many Whovians will fondly remember from 2005. We also talk about Rob's book We All Hear Stories in the Dark. A titanic triptych weighing in at 3 volumes and nearly 2,000 pages, it is a thing of intricate and labyrinthine beauty, a choose your own adventure which no two readers will ever encounter in the same way.  We reflect on how this epic act of love and grief came to be, the joys of reading, literary adaptation, fan culture, and the pleasures and pains of being a writer.

As a special extra for Big Bang, Wigtown's annual dark skies festival, Elizabeth Tindal, Freelance Ranger and Biosphere Dark Sky Ranger, will be talking us through her stargazing adventures in the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park every evening at 8pm throughout the festival. This podcast is about Orion and the story of the Seven Sisters.

As a special extra for Big Bang, Wigtown's annual dark skies festival, Elizabeth Tindal, Freelance Ranger and Biosphere Dark Sky Ranger, will be talking us through her stargazing adventures in the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park every evening at 8pm throughout the festival. This podcast is about the winter circle of stars around Orion and where to find Mars. Mars is in a particular position at the moment and very easy to pick out.

As a special extra for Big Bang, Wigtown's annual dark skies festival, Elizabeth Tindal, Freelance Ranger and Biosphere Dark Sky Ranger, will be talking us through her stargazing adventures in the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park every evening at 8pm throughout the festival. Tonight, Elizabeth talks to us about Orion.

As a special extra for Big Bang, Wigtown's annual dark skies festival, Elizabeth Tindal, Freelance Ranger and Biosphere Dark Sky Ranger, will be talking us through her stargazing adventures in the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park every evening at 8pm throughout the festival. Tonight, Elizabeth talks to us about the Plough and the North Star.

As a special extra for Big Bang, Wigtown's annual dark skies festival, Elizabeth Tindal, Freelance Ranger and Biosphere Dark Sky Ranger, will be talking us through her stargazing adventures in the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park every evening at 8pm throughout the festival. Listen to Elizabeth's introduction to find out a few stargazing tips and some recommendations on what to take with you. Then join us tomorrow (3 March) for Episode 1 of Big Bang Stargazing.

We chat with writer and visual artist Sara Baume about her third book, handiwork. Just last week shortlisted for the prestigious Rathbones Folio Prize, it is a contemplative short narrative that charts Sara's daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. Short and spare, gentle and devastating, handiwork reflects on the nature of art, grief, bird migration and a life lived well.

On this episode we’re joined by two special guests well-acquainted with the life and work of Robert Burns in a special episode for Burns Night 2021. Professor Gerard Carruthers is Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow where he’s leading on a major project 'Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century'. He’s General Editor of the new Oxford Collected Works of Robert Burns, Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies and also secretary of the Robert Burns Ellisland Trust. In our conversation with Gerry he tells us more about Burns and Dumfries and how we can celebrate Ellisland and its treasures for now and for the future.   Gerda Stevenson is an award-winning writer, actor, director and singer-songwriter, who has worked in theatre, television, radio, film, and opera throughout Britain and abroad. Her poetry, drama and prose have been widely published, staged, and broadcast. We talk about her second poetry collection, QUINES: Poems in tribute to women of Scotland, which charts the contribution made to Scottish history and society by remarkable women, from Neolithic times to the 21st century, starring singers, politicians, fish-gutters, queens, dancers, marine engineers and many more. Also, as one of the foremost performers of Burns’, we discuss her relationship to his work, some favourites, and a few top performance tips for the brave souls gearing up for Burns Night 2021 style.

On this, the last episode of 2020, we look back at podcasts past to pluck out some books for your reading future. And for Christmas present, we chat with New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan about piano playing, Christmas traditions around the world and her return to the island of Mure for ‘Christmas at the Island Hotel’, a heartwarming new novel celebrating the season and Scotland.

This episode features the wonderful Polly Pullar. No stranger to Wigtown Book Festival audiences as one of our wonderful chair people, the tables are turned here as we hear about Polly’s life and work as a wildlife rehabilitator and journalist - Perthshire’s own Dr Doolittle. In this conservation, Polly tells us about a childhood spent in thrall to nature, introduces us to some of her menagerie and stars of her books, including A Scurry of Squirrels - Nurturing the Wild, due out in July, rewilding, the joys of nature during lockdown, and all other times too.

This episode features the entire event from this year’s Wigtown Book Festival with chair Lee Randall in conversation with author Douglas Stuart, who was announced last week as the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize for his novel Shuggie Bain.

On this episode we continue our series of highlights from this year’s festival with two very different authors who are united in emphasising the importance of promoting healthy relationships between us. The ways in which we relate to the world and to the people in our community has been drawn into stark relief this year and bestselling YA author Nicola Yoon and the pioneering campaigner and author Alastair McIntosh take very different approaches to exploring the best ways we can relate to our environment, to our community and to ourselves.

On this episode we revisit two very special events from this year's festival, featuring two of Northern Ireland’s finest exports, poet Michael Longley and novelist Jan Carson. Listen to the short story 'Soup' which Jan reads in its entirety and hear edited highlights from Michael Longley's conversation with diplomat, author and fellow Belfastian William D. Hanna.

On this episode we feature more edited highlights from this year's Wigtown Book Festival with excerpts from our events with wildlife TV presenter and author Kate Humble and former British Army officer, international aid worker and spy thriller writer Simon Conway.

On this episode we hear about witches and graveyards with authors Alice Tarbuck and Peter Ross who discuss their books A Spell in the Wild: A Year (and six centuries) of Magic and A Tomb with A View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards with Hannah Trevarthen and Dani Garavelli. You can buy copies of these from our website https://bookshop.wigtownbookfestival.com

In the first podcast of edited highlights from this year's Wigtown Book Festival we feature two award winning authors whose very different books look at our interconnected lives. Conservationist and nature writer Dara McAnulty, winner of the Wainwright Prize at the age of just 16, talks to Rachel Plummer about his book Diary of a Young Naturalist. Multi-award winning author Maggie O’Farrell speaks to Stephanie Merritt about her fictional account of Shakespeare's son, the eponymous Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 in 1596.